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Warrington's 'Night Soil Men' emptying 'Toilet Tubs' 1950's


Dizzy

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No gloves, no masks and clearly no workers Health and Safety worries those days.

 

Warrington's 'Night Soil Men' on their rounds emptying people's outhouse 'Toilet Tubs' in the 1950's.

 

The tubs were emptied weekly apparently and the contents were taken by cart/van to the depot on Corporation Street.

 

The smell must have been awful :shock:

 

A lot of you on here may remember this and I'm so glad I was born in the 60's

 

soilmenemptyingtoilettubs1950s.jpg

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Dizz, 1940 to 1951 we lived in Oldham street, Latchford in a two up, two down terraced house and we all had bin toilets down the yard and I do remember the sewage men coming round each week, other than that I shall not add further explanation other than saying that it was my job to cut squares of newspaper (News of the World would have been ideal for the purpose) and thread each piece on to a length of twine this was then hung on a nail in the outside bog and used as toilet paper. If you needed to 'go' in the dark you took a box of matches with you and lit a candle and you never hung about very long in the winter brrrrr! cold bum weather. :wink:

outside-toilet.jpg

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Our house would have had one too Algy hence the two doors to our outhouse I guess. There must have been a seperating wall inside it as some stage looking at your picture. Was that YOUR toilet by the way and if so why did you take a photo of it ?

 

I'm not sure I ever want to go in my outhouse again now as for some strange reason I just presumed they used to contain older stype 'fitted' toilets with drains and maybe a bucket of water to flush :oops:

 

As for using newspaper to wipe ... didn't all the print come off on your hands and bum cheeks :unsure:

 

One things for sure though I bet you just as quick in the summer months as you were in winter due to the heat, smells and flies.

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Dizz, no that was not our toilet although it was identical, you mentioned having two doors in the structure in your yard the other door would have more than likely have been a coal shed. I'm fairly sure that there would have been a flush toilet outside, as in the the mid to late 1950s' a lot of the bin toilets were removed, the access door in the backs bricked up and flush toilets installed in their place usually with an overhead cistern and a pull chain.

Yes the print did come but as toilet paper was not available or too expensive after the war, no other option really.

 

THIS IS MY ATTEMPT AT EXPLAINING WHAT AN OUTSIDE TOILET WAS.

Outside toilets in a terraced house block consisted of one brick structure and one roof with an internal dividing wall following the line of the yard wall this gave a separate toilet area with a separate entrance door in each back yard for each of the two adjoining houses, however this dividing wall did not carry through to the back wall of the toilet building as another wall ran across at right angles with a lintel supporting it this enable the bin men to draw the full bins from under the wooden seat to empty them from the rear of the structure via a single door situated in the back street, so although each house had a separate toilet there was a shared access door in the rear wall in the back entry or ‘backs’ as it was known.

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I'm pretty sure I followed all that Algy.... thanks :D

 

Safe to say from your description that my outhouse did not (hopefully) contain a 'toilet tub' as the outhouse is attached to the rear of the property and not the wall of the back yard so therefore the 'soil men' wouldn't have been able to get access to the tubs. PHEW.

 

I know our attached outhouses did have flush toilets in them with proper drains in one section at some time (hence the two doors I presume). My neighbour said there was still a working flush toilet in theirs when they moved in but they had it taken out and we all seem to have sewer drains and lead water supply pipes into our outhouses too. Most of these seem to have been blocked off over the years. Considering the size of our tiny bathrooms maybe we will put ours back outside along with a walk in shower :lol:

 

A couple of the other houses along here still have their little buildings on the back walls with access doors from the backs so I they must have been for the old toilet tubs from what you say. I always thought they were just coal 'sheds'.

 

I might have to have a walk later and investigate further. Best not take my camera or people will think I'm weird, they already think I'm a bit odd but toilet chat and door spotting may just push them over the edge :blink:

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Lighten up Peter... I bet you laughed at PJ's comment really :wink::lol: (I did :P:lol: )

 

Do you think using these 'Toilet Tubs' and sitting in the cold and dark (Dizzy checks her spelling to make sure she did type 'sitting') may have had an adverse effect on you during your earlier years, the effects of which have made you somewhat (again checks for typos as the word 'somewhat' and 'some squat' rhyme) grumpy with life's offerings :huh:

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